High school baseball: Brighton comes from behind to beat Spanish Fork in Game 1 of 5A championship series

Brighton 6 Spanish Fork 3

The No. 2 seed Brighton Bengals made an offensive push in the later innings to defeat the Cinderella No. 20 Spanish Fork Dons 6-3 in Game 1 of the best-of-3 5A baseball championship series.

Easton Fry had himself a very nice game offensively with a home run and scoring two runs, while Josh Mawhinney started on the mound for the Bengals and while he struggled a little bit at the start, he really settled into the game and pitched 6 1/3 quality innings with five strikeouts.

“Spanish Fork is a really good, scrappy team. I’m proud of my guys. They had a lot of reasons to lose their composure with certain things throughout the course of the game, but they didn’t and they kept their composure,” said Brighton head coach Mark Kleven.

“Most importantly I’m proud of my offense. They hit the ball well today. They don’t have a lot of hits to show for it, but they came through with some timely hits.”

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The Dons came out swinging in the bottom of the first inning and loaded the bases. They were able to get a run across with an RBI single by Sammy Dart, who was also their starting pitcher.

Spanish Fork then doubled its lead in the third inning. After a sacrifice bunt by Trigg Cloward moved the runner over to second base, Jackie Sorenson drilled an RBI single up the middle, making it a 2-0 Dons lead.

The bats to a while to get going for Brighton, but they eventually came alive in a big way in the fourth inning. With two on and two outs, the Bengals got some clutch and timely hitting from Fry, who stepped up and blasted a homer over the left field wall to give the Bengals a lead at 3-2 that they would refuse to relinquish.

The homer by Fry seemed to really propel and energize the Brighton bats, and they got some much-needed insurance in the sixth inning, scoring another three runs with RBIs from JC Garza, Miles Layton and Tyler Orton.

But much like what Spanish Fork has done through the improbable run, it played until its very last out. The Dons had two runners on base with just one out in the seventh inning when Brighton made a pitching change and brought on Copper Scott to finish out the game.

It could not have gone any better, as Scott struck out the next two batters to take Game 1.

“Our motto for the last month has been to just win the next pitch. Focus on the now and win the next pitch, and that’s what we’re doing. We need to be true to ourselves, have each other’s backs and just win the next pitch,” said Kleven.

Even though Brighton is considered the big favorite to win the title, Kleven knows that with what Spanish Fork has shown in this tournament, the Dons are capable of stealing the championship if his team is not careful.

“We don’t care who is on the other side,” Kleven said. “These guys are going to go out and they’re not going to be afraid. You’ve got to throw it and you’ve got to hit it. You hit it and we’re gonna field it. That’s been the approach all season long.”